sometimes i find myself blogging about the inanities of my everyday life, such as i was yesterday, and i want to apologize to you, my tiny flock of readers. not so much because the post is self-involved and comprises useless information for most of you, but rather because the writing isn't very good. it just sometimes seems to lack any verve, humor, or even a hint of interest on my own part in what i'm writing about. it may best be described perhaps as gormless. in the future i'll try to put in more of an effort.
Wolfowitz on being fired: "I think it tells us more about the media than about the bank and I'll leave it at that," he told the British Broadcasting Corp. "People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were around the bend... I accept the fact that by the time we got around to that, emotions here were so overheated that I don't think I could have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish for the people I really care about."
I also blame the media. It's a shame that such an upstanding citizen--nay! a good samaritan!--such as Paul Wolfowitz would have his name sullied by such a nefarious group of gossip slingers. Mr. Wolfowitz, I weep tears of sympathy. All you wanted to do was help the poor of the world and the thanks you get is the vitriol of... well, everyone. You did manage to lift your significant other out of the bonds of poverty. A noble deed. Only 3 billion people to go. Maybe now that you find yourself with some spare time, and your S.O. has some extra cash to spare, you can haul yourselves out of the mud you've been dragged through and truly express your love and goodwill toward the disadvantaged of the world. Or maybe you can't.
3 comments:
I think he came to the bank with baggage--his involvement in the Iraq war not the least of it. The Europeans didn't want him from the beginning. Then he managed the institution as an autocrat which offended nearly everyone in the bank apparently. His small act of corruption in the name of love was the last straw to many and an act of hypocrisy to others since his drumbeat was to stamp out corruption in other governments. The only thing that caused me pause for thought was Andrew Young's impassioned defense (you might be too young to know the name Andrew Young, but he was the first black person to be nominated from the floor of a Democratic National Convention for VP of the USA, but alas he had to decline because he was too ...young. (He later became the mayor of Atlanta.) of Wolfowitz because of his previous tireless and earnest work on international poverty issues. But, he's gone...another Bushie bites the dust.
After reading up a little on Andrew Young, his defense of Wolfowitz means very little to me. While Andrew Young seems to have played an important role in the Civil Rights movement, his associations recently leave a little to be desired. He's worked for Wal-Mart in a public relations campaign designed to improve their image regarding their employment practices, which haven't seemed to change much and is the co-chair of Good Works International, a consulting company supposedly "offering international market access and political risk analysis," whatever that means. According to Wikipedia, they did some kind of inspection and report of Nike operations in Vietnam, which anti-sweatshop activists basically called a joke. So his reliability regarding doing work for the little people seems somewhat compromised. Maybe all those years as a politician corrupted what were once altruistic motives.
If Wolfowitz cared that much about those in need he would weigh that against decisions like giving his girlfriend a raise. It's a small thing to some degree, but does that not say something much larger about his character and his priorities? How can you justify giving a person hundreds of thousands of dollars when part of your job is trying to help people that live on less than a dollar a day?
Wolfowitz has also been criticized for his work as Ambassador to Indonesia, for failing to halt the proliferation of corruption throughout Indonesian government.
That said, he definitely did come into the bank with a ton of baggage, which is one of the reasons he never should've been given the job. I blame Bush's poor judgment of character and complete lack of common sense as much as anything. Maybe I sound like a crazy radical. Or maybe I'm just pissed off that this kind of thing ever came to pass.
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